It’s a month of relaunches and new titles, as the “Heroic Age” branding continues. June saw the relaunch of NEW AVENGERS, and debut issues of AVENGERS PRIME, AVENGERS ACADEMY, HAWKEYE & MOCKINGBIRD and YOUNG ALLIES. Elsewhere, the X-books continue the “Second Coming” crossover, Spider-Man begins the long-trailed “Grim Hunt” story, and the Hulk titles are caught up in “World War Hulks”.

As usual, Marvel had the largest share of the direct market, beating DC by 43% to 35% in units, and 38% to 31% in dollars.

It’s a good month for the Avengers titles, with four of them in the top 10. Over the last few months, I’ve observed several times that the device of relaunching a title from issue #1 doesn’t seem to be all that effective any more – and we’ll see some examples of that later on. But NEW AVENGERS looks to be an exception – perhaps because its relaunch actually did coincide with the end of a multi-year storyline and the beginning of a fresh start for the book. It’s also got three variant covers.

To put this in perspective, the original NEW AVENGERS #1 in December 2004 had estimated orders of 278,797 in its first month. But a straight renumbering in a weaker market was never going to match that, and these are the highest sales for NEW AVENGERS since the first half of 2007.

May’s FINALE one-shot picks up re-orders of 5,234, which are included above. Incidentally, it’s an unusually high-selling month at the bottom end of the chart. In May, it only took 3,069 orders to make the top 300. In June, it was 4,528. Presumably that means that fewer re-orders will have sold well enough to make the chart.

Month three of the “Second Coming” crossover, running through UNCANNY X-MEN, X-MEN LEGACY, X-FORCE and NEW MUTANTS. The sales boost remains solid.

10. AVENGERS PRIME
06/10 Avengers Prime #1 of 5 - 69,433

A miniseries focussing on Captain America, Iron Man and Thor, and the fourth Avengers title in this month’s top ten. This issue has a 1:25 variant, but that’s pretty modest compared to the other Avengers titles, which makes this a strong showing.

Issue #633 is a Heroic Age variant. Issue #634 is the first part of “Grim Hunt”, a storyline which the book has been building to for months. All the “Grim Hunt” issues have a 50-50 variant cover, and issue #634 also has a third cover by Joe Quinones.

Overall, sales continue to hover in the familiar territory. Marvel have announced another format shift for October, moving to a twice-monthly schedule.

No variant cover this month, hence the steeper than normal drop. It’s taken the better part of four years, but the book seems to be heading back to the sort of sales levels it was experiencing before the death of Steve Rogers.

Better than it looks. Issue #610 had a variant cover, and issues #607-609 were SIEGE tie-ins, so effectively THOR is just returning to previous levels. Also, this issue was originally supposed to be the first issue for the new creative team of Matt Fraction and Pascual Ferry, before their debut was pushed back to issue #615. You might think that ran the risk of painting these as filler issues, but there’s no sign of that.

Five issues in three months is at least getting the book back on schedule. Taking a fresh issue #1 for the second story arc hasn’t really helped sales, but it’s done no harm either – it looks like the number will level out in the upper 40K range.

AVENGERS ACADEMY isn’t a direct relaunch of AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE. But it occupies much the same place in the line, and I’m treating here as a continuation. This issue has two variant covers (plus the “Heroic Age” branding, for whatever that’s worth), so at first glance you might expect to see a bigger increase.

However, INITIATIVE closed with a SIEGE tie-in arc, and picked up sales in a big way in the months leading up to that. It bottomed out at 29K in November 2009. If we take that as a measure of INITIATIVE’s baseline sales, then a 46K debut for the replacement title is quite promising.

No variant cover this month, so the drop isn’t too bad. The series relaunches in September as DAKEN: DARK WOLVERINE; in the interests of common sense, I’m treating it as a new series that started with DARK WOLVERINE #75, and I’ve moved the sales history from earlier years over to WOLVERINE: WEAPON X.

The first Marvel comic to be released digitally on the same day that it appeared in stores – but it’s difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions from an annual, since it’s pure guesswork what it would have sold normally. It’s 12,000 below the parent title, which isn’t particularly surprising one way or the other.

Hmm. The new direction, which began with issue #144, doesn’t seem to have had much impact on sales, one way or the other. There’s a slight increase from six months ago (i.e., just before the SIEGE tie-in issues started), but nothing enormous.

Seems to have bottomed out over the last few months, but Marvel will be hoping for much better when the series relaunches as WOLVERINE in September. It seems to be tacitly conceded that this launch has backfired badly.

I’d have hoped for a slightly smaller drop by the third issue. More to the point, though, this series is effectively the replacement for DEADPOOL: MERC WITH A MOUTH – which sells 4,000 higher, and is fairly steady. This is looking like it might have been a mistake.

The Spider-Man minis are heading in the right direction. JACKPOT launched with 18K, AMERICAN SON with 20K, and now BLACK CAT starts at 25K. Okay, yes, this issue has a J Scott Campbell variant cover, but the Black Cat is also a higher profile character, which is bound to play a part.

Yikes. This doesn’t look too healthy. But then again, LEGACY is a story set in past continuity, which probably had its first issues sales massively inflated by the movie release; it’s possible that we’re seeing a huge initial downward correction and that the book will settle down after that. You never know.

Yes, PUNISHER is renamed to reflect the fact that he’s now Frankenstein. The storyline actually ends with issue #21, and there’s no solicitation for issue #22 in October. But in the circumstances, I wouldn’t rule out yet another relaunch.

The reprint book FRANKEN-CASTLE: BIRTH OF THE MONSTER had estimated orders of 4,796, charting at number 294.

Another book with no variant cover this month, so the drop isn’t quite as bad as it looks – and it’s only a couple of hundred below the last variant-free issue in March. The series is going on hiatus to be replaced by a SHADOWLAND tie-in miniseries.

This is the prologue to “Curse of the Mutants”, the storyline which launches the new X-MEN series in July. X-MEN is being hyped to the hills. Now, you’d expect the prologue to come in some way behind the main title. And the solicitations could perhaps have hammered the book’s significant a bit harder. But even allowing for those factors, this is hardly a ringing endorsement from the retailers.

117. HERCULES: TWILIGHT OF A GOD
06/10 Twilight of a God #1 of 4 - 16,302

A sequel to Bob Layton’s 1980s stories about Hercules in the future. Sales are about what I’d expect from that sort of mini.

With a couple of exceptions, there’s little variation in the sales of these one-shots – even though the characters come from titles ranging from UNCANNY X-MEN down to ATLAS, with a similarly wide range of sales.

Still slowly dropping – but then, ANITA BLAKE was always something of anomaly among Marvel’s novel adaptations, by virtue of selling significant quantities in the direct market. It may simply have come into line with other similar titles.

Both doing fine, by the standards of Marvel’s all ages books. These titles presumably don’t depend on the direct market anyway.

Several titles missed the chart – OFFICIAL INDEX: AVENGERS #2, SENSE AND SENSIBILITY #2, IRON MAN: EXTREMIS DIRECTOR’S CUT #2-4, and the Icon book DREAM LOGIC #1. Bear in mind, this really was an exceptional month, with 4,528 needed to make the charts – the INDEX hasn’t been beating that number since July 2009, but this is the first time it’s failed to chart.

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Comments

“More evidence that lengthy delays don’t seem to have an immediate impact on sales.”

If I could make one single change in the way you report these things, sir, it would probably to change every time the word “sales” appears, to globally replace it with “orders”.

As a very general rule, the orders for an issue reflect only the sales of TWO ISSUES BACK (sometimes three)

“Sales trend” is probably OK usage, but in virtually every other case what you actually mean to be saying is “orders”, or, perhaps if you prefer, “sales to retailers” — when you talk about that line in ASTONISHING X-MEN that’s not even good speculation about consumer reaction… it will be #35 that will tell you how #33 sold to consumers…

That Heralds miniseries was pretty dire, so it deserved less attention than it got. I’ve read a couple of Immonen books lately (Heralds and Pixie Strikes Back), and neither of them was particularly coherent or any good.

Speaking as a retailer, I don’t recall Astonishing X-Men #34 being resolicited to account for the lateness. As a result, it’s entirely possible that Diamond just used the initial orders placed eight months ago. In which case, there wouldn’t be a larger than usual drop for the obvious reasons.

I may be wrong about that though, so if anyone remembers a resolicit, feel free to correct me.

I received the first three issues of Black Widow from Marvel to fill my Spider-Woman subscription (despite my telling them to switch the remaining issues to my Captain America subscription, but that’s beside the point). I liked what I read but with the sales as bad as they are I’ll probably wait for the trade rather than start buying monthly. Who knows how long it will last.

Since the SHADOWLAND: MOON KNIGHT miniseries was solicited in its place and runs through to October (which was the most recent set of solicitations), I don’t see how you can conclude that it’s been “silently cancelled” until we see the November solicitations and find out whether Marvel have solicited NEW MOON KNIGHT #1 or some such thing. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it has been axed, but I don’t see how we can conclude that at this stage.

See, I thought the Heralds mini was great, and Immonen is my favourite writer currently working for Marvel by a looong way (I’m still really annoyed the Hellcat mini hasn’t been collected). Granted, I never expected it to set the sales charts alight, (or to be to everyone’s tastes, I suppose) but for giddy “oh my, now this is awesome” moments while reading, it certainly did it for me.

I read that Hellcat mini and thought it went off the rails pretty badly, too. Immonen just doesn’t do it for me, it seems. Maybe I’m just not the target audience for these “girl power” comics that she seems to want to produce.

I read both HERALDS and HELLCAT. I was impressed by Immonen’s talent, her sense of humor, and her handling of characters, but not by her plotting ability. HELLCAT could have been at least two issues shorter; the basic situation was that simple, that easily resolved. The plot in HERALDS was only slightly better. Until she gets serious, so to speak, about writing and does a tight story, I won’t know whether she can do one.

Heralds was let down by the change in artist. It was billed to have Tonci Zonjic all the way through the run, but then come issue 2 – nope. The replacement artists weren’t so great. And the only promotion it got I think was one interview on CBR.

That shouldn’t be all that surprising however. Given that the creative team is changing after the first five issue arc (a bait-and-switch tactic that annoys me to no end), that essentially tells fans that Marvel either didn’t have faith in the original team (and as such, why should fans have faith in the title) or Marvel didn’t have much of a plan going into the title in the first place (hence the sudden shift in creative team — and again, if there doesn’t seem to be a good plan in place, why should fans believe in the book).

For me Heralds was hurt by having two fill-in artists, neither of whom worked in the same style or complimented Zonjic’s art. Which was a shame, as I was prepared to buy the trade on the strength of Zonjic alone. As it was, the end result looked like a mess just from the shifts in art styles alone.

Immonen may have some plotting weaknesses, but hell, so does Brian Bendis. She is strong with characterization; I thought the dialogue between Emma Frost and Scott Summers in issue #1 was particularly well done.

Since the SHADOWLAND: MOON KNIGHT miniseries was solicited in its place and runs through to October (which was the most recent set of solicitations), I don’t see how you can conclude that it’s been “silently cancelled” until we see the November solicitations and find out whether Marvel have solicited NEW MOON KNIGHT #1 or some such thing. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it has been axed, but I don’t see how we can conclude that at this stage.

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I can conclude the book has been silently canceled because a friend of mine, who has a mail subscription to the book, told me that Marvel has switched his subscription from MOON KNIGHT to a different Marvel series. That screams “silently canceled” to me.